Model Rockets

Sorry about the blur, I'll figure out a better way to put these up.

Chegg?

So I recently came across this website via SlickDeals. Its a site called Chegg, and they describe themselves as a cross between ebay and facebook. It is supposedly only for students, but you can reap all the benefits by having a .edu address. The site is built (somewhat amateurishly of you ask me) around students' posts. They are currently trying to generate traffic in two ways. The first way is by daily "hatches". These usually occur at 3PM PST and vary from crappy deals ($20 for Borat DVD) to awesome ($99 for a Wii). The site is not consistent in the method or the time that they announce these deals. Sometimes it is through video, sometimes they can be found on dealspl.us . Shipping is free, which is nice, but you'll see that they are also awful at shipping.

The second way they generate traffic is golden egg hunts. Basically, they hide "golden" egg items in their posts. At first, whoever found these first won the items. This is awesome for people who know about the site, but leaves no reason for people to tell their friends (more people = more competition). Also, some stanford kids were caught for "cheating" - using java scripts to pull all the images down from the website and then comparing hashes to find the golden eggs. The "added security" for this was what they call "requirements" for winning an item. These have ranged from awful (email 100 friends about chegg 1st to win a Wii) to fun (various puzzles). The site is influenced a lot by user suggestions also, (ie someone complained about spamming people to win prizes and they pledged to never do email reqs again) which is interesting in itself.

The real question is, "How does chegg make money?". No idea here. Also, how did these kids get $2 million in investment capital? The website interface and security suck. Also, items have been shipped to me with a decent amount of address info missing from the envelope and the stamps are not your standard "printed from the USPS postage", but actually a collage of stamps with varying postage ($.02, $.37, etc), like they had rifled through their parents drawers looking for stamps. All in all though, I have won some great swag, pictured here, but also recently received a Wii.

Ha.

white boxes

A rough cut at it:

Vanishing Point Game - Tomb

Vanishing Point Game Entry 11 - Meta development

From VPWiki (originally posted by thebruce in Unfiction):
It looks like the number of little white and filled in patches on each feather are not accidental and will possibly lead to something. At least we now know this to be a major part of the game, thanks to Loki's new video. Also, people have noticed in the videos that when Loki says the word "Right" in the videos, she always adjusts her glasses:
This image was found at www.vanishingpointgame.com/images/loki.jpg

Vanishing Point Game Entry Ten - Puzzle Box Two

Seven Card Monte:
Use each card like a phone keypad. Where you have to click to get them to flip is the number. Filling these in, along with the 263 from the LA clue gives us: 877-263-4786
Calling gets Loki, who asks what disappeared Halloween night, 1:26, in rm 401, detroit - HOUDINI
The Rest of Them:
I am too tired to explain all the rest, there are plenty of explanations in the forums, and its not worth repeating here.....sorry.

RABBIT TRAIL : PRESTO
POSTERS : WHITE
MIND READER : MATE
X-RAY CARDS : 2:H, 4:D, 6:H, A:S, 5:C

TALE OF 2 BROTHERS : AMAZE
GRAVITY LOCK : SECRECY
DOMINO : DRAWING A BLANK
MAGIC LESSON : SEWANEE

HEADLINER : LIGHT
SEVEN CARD MONTE : HOUDINI
POSTCARDS : T. NELSON DOWNS
CUPS AND BALLS : STAGE

Vanishing Point Game Entry Nine - White Box Phenomenon?

I saw this: http://vanishingpointwiki.com/wiki/White_Box_Phenomenon on the VP wiki. Very interesting. Looks like some sort of other puzzle, but very complicated, seeing as the boxes are so small.

Weird.